“Lady,” he whispered to her. “It was grand.”
Then, looking past the Commander to the squad leader, he shrugged his indifference to the whole business. “Lead the way, Cap. I put myself in your capable hands.”
Whatever his thoughts might have been on the matter, the squad leader was smart enough to keep them to himself.
5
The flat-faced, burly line sergeant had been drinking at the bar in the back room of the company blacksmith’s for over an hour before he got up the nerve to walk over to Little Red. She was sitting alone at a table in the rear, clouded by shadow and the kind of studied disinterest in her surroundings that made it clear she was not to be approached. The line sergeant might have recognized as much five tankards of ale earlier, when his judgment was still clear enough to warn him against foolish behavior. But his anger at the way that she had humiliated him the night before, coupled with false bravado fueled by the quantity of his drink, finally won out.
He squared himself away in front of her, a big man, using his size as an implied threat.
“You and me got something to settle, Little Red,” he declared loudly.
Heads turned. A few soldiers rose and quietly moved for the doors leading out. The blacksmith’s wife, who tended bar for her husband in the midday, glanced over with a frown. Outside, in the sweltering heat of the forge, iron clanged on iron, and hot metal thrust into water hissed and steamed.
Rue Meridian did not look up. She kept her gaze steady and direct, staring off into space, her hands cupped loosely around her tankard of ale. She was there because she wanted to be alone. She should have been flying, but her heart wasn’t in it anymore and her thoughts were constantly on the coast and home.
“You listening to me?” he snapped.
She could smell the line sergeant, his breath, unwashed body and hair, soiled uniform. She wondered if he noticed how foul he had become while living in the field, but guessed he hadn’t.
“You think you’re something, don’t you?” Perhaps because of her silence, he was growing braver. He shifted his weight closer. “You look at me when I talk to you, Rover girl!”
She sighed. “Isn’t it enough that I have to listen to you and smell you? Do I have to look at you, too? That seems like a lot to ask of me.”
For a moment he just stared at her, vaguely confused. Then he knocked the tankard of ale from between her hands and drew his short sword. “You cheated me, Little Red! No one does that! I want my money back!”
She leaned back in her chair, her gaze lifting. She gave him a cursory glance and looked away again. “I didn’t cheat you, Sergeant.” She smiled pleasantly. “I didn’t have to. You were so bad that it wasn’t necessary. When you get better, which you might one day manage to do, then I might have to cheat you.”
His bearded face clouded with fresh anger. “Give me back my money!”
Like magic, a throwing knife appeared in her hand. At once, he backed away.
“I spent it, all of it, every last cent. There wasn’t that much to begin with.” She looked at him once more. “What’s your problem, Sergeant? You’ve been drinking at the bar for the last hour, so you’re not broke.”
He worked his mouth as if he was having trouble getting words out. “Just give me my money.”
Last night she had bested him in a knife-throwing contest, although that would be using the word contest rather loosely since he was the worst knife thrower she could remember competing against. The cost to him had been his pride and his purse, and evidently it was a price he had not been prepared to pay.
“Get away from me,” she said wearily.
“You’re nothing, Little Red!” he exploded. “Just a cheating little witch!”
She thought momentarily about killing him, but she didn’t feel like dealing with the consequences of doing so, so she abandoned the idea. “You want a rematch, Sergeant?” she asked instead. “One throw. You win, I give you back your money. I win, you buy me a fresh tankard of ale and leave me in peace. Done?”
He studied her suspiciously, as if trying to determine what the catch was. She waited him out patiently, watching his eyes, the throwing knife balanced loosely in her palm.
“Done,” he agreed finally.
She rose, loose and easy in her dark Rover clothing, decorative bright scarves and sashes wrapped about her waist and shoulders, the ends trailing down in silken streamers, her long red hair shimmering in the lamplight. Rue Meridian was a beautiful woman by any standard, and more than a few men had been attracted to her when she had first joined the Federation army. But the number had dwindled after the first two who had tried unsuccessfully to force their affections on her had spent weeks in the hospital recovering from their wounds. Men still found her attractive, but they were more careful now about how they approached her. There was nothing “little” about Little Red. She was tall and broad-shouldered, lean and fit. She was called Little Red in deference to Big Red, her half brother, Redden Alt Mer. They had the same red hair and rangy frame, the same green eyes, the same quick smile and explosive temper. They had the same mother, as well, but different fathers. In theirs, as in many Rover clans, the men came and went while the women remained.
The line sergeant was casting about for a target. Last night, they had used a black circle the size of a thumbnail drawn on a support beam. They had thrown their knives in turn, two throws each. The sergeant had missed the mark both times; she had not. The sergeant complained, but paid up, cowed perhaps by the presence of so many other Rovers and fellow soldiers. There had been no mention of cheating then, no mention of getting his money back. He must have been stewing about it all night.
“There,” he said, pointing at the same black circle on the beam, stepping to the same line they had drawn on the board flooring the night before.
“Here, here,” the smith’s wife complained at once. “You busted up a whole row of glasses throwing past the beam last night. Your aim’s as poor as your judgment, Blenud Trock! You throw your knives somewhere else this time!”
The sergeant glared at her. “You’ll get your money when I get mine!”
Trock. It was the first time Rue Meridian had heard his name spoken. “Let’s move over here, Sergeant,” she suggested.
She led him away from the bar and deeper into the room. The makeshift building was backed into a hill, and a stain from runoff had darkened the rear wall in a distinctive V. Just above and to the right, water droplets hung from a beam, falling every now and then onto the floor.
She stopped twenty feet away and drew a line with her toe in the dust and grime. Not the cleanest establishment she had ever frequented, but not the dirtiest either. These sorts of places came and went with the movement of the army. This one had endured because the army hadn’t gone anywhere in some time. It was illegal, but it was left alone because the soldiers required some sort of escape out in the middle of nowhere, miles from any city.
She brushed back her fiery hair and looked at the sergeant.
“We’ll stand together at the line. Once set, when the next drop of water falls from that beam, we throw at the V. Closest and quickest to the crease wins.”
“Huh!” he grunted, taking his place. He muttered something else, but she couldn’t hear. Throwing knife in hand, he set his stance. “Ready,” he said.
She took a deep, slow breath and let her arms hang loose at her sides, the throwing knife resting comfortably in the palm of her right hand, the blade cool and smooth against the skin of her wrist and forearm. A small crowd had gathered behind them, soldiers from the front on leave and off duty, anxious for a little fresh entertainment. She was aware of others drifting in from outside, but the room remained oddly hushed. She grew languid and vaguely ethereal, as if her mind had separated from her body. Her eyes remained fixed, however, on the beam with its water droplets suspended in a long row, tiny pinpricks of reflective light against the shadows.